Soul Survivor (10 page)

W
e found Jed and with the help of Adrienne's charm, he brought us to Lena's body. The room was filled with what looked like giant filing cabinets and he threw the door open as simply and easily as though he were showing us the coatroom. “Here she is,” he said, gesturing palm up. “Need me to move her to an exam table for ya?”

Adrienne ushered him out of the room once again with one arm around his shoulder. “No, no, that won't be necessary. We'll call you when we're done.” She locked the door behind him, then, with a flick of her hand, Lena's body lifted and she was levitating over to one of the exam tables.

“Show-off,” I muttered under my breath. She and George both darted a glance in my direction—damn supernatural hearing. I mean, sure . . . no one really knew about my witchcraft yet. But it still annoyed me that her power had developed so quickly as such a fledgling angel. Years of practice as a witch must have aided her advancement.

Adrienne cleared her throat, purposefully ignoring my petulant banter. Which made me hate her even more. “After we finish with her, her body will be released to the family to have a proper burial.”

Once Lena was on the table, everyone immediately noticed that she, too, wore the marks of a vampire on her inner thigh. Damien measured the distance between the marks this time.... It was a little over three-inches. “Shit,” he muttered and ran a hand through his dark hair.

Crossing my arms, I couldn't help the haughty smile that curved across my face. “I've never heard of teeth spaces getting
smaller
, have you, D?” George snickered from the corner and Adrienne acted as though she didn't hear me. Something we all knew to be bullshit since she could have heard a pin drop onto carpet in the Toyota parked across the street. When Damien didn't answer, I simply continued. “Because I certainly have never heard of such things. So, we may have two vampires working together on these murders?”

“That would be unlikely,” he said through gritted teeth. “Vampires can barely stand to live with their own covens . . . much less share a kill.”

“Lena Vlasik,” Adrienne said aloud in a noble effort to change the direction of the conversation. “She was drowned in a rain storm, then was left hanging on a road sign.”

Damien played with the latex glove, snapping it against his wrist. “Her lungs were filled with water and her jaw was locked in an open position when they found her on the road.” He tilted her jaw back to inspect her nose.

George pushed off the wall in the back of the room, walking forward without getting too close. A sharp intake of breath came from over my shoulder as he peeked at the body.

“Her car was wet on the inside—as though the rain had flooded it. Then it was abandoned on the side of the road,” Adrienne continued.

“Shouldn't you already know all of this?” I asked.

She looked up at me from behind the folder. “I do. I'm repeating it for
you
.”

Celtic runes surrounded her body; the arcane was subtler than with Moe's, but then again, she had been dead for longer. The inside of her wrist had a different family crest—one I didn't recognize. Damien held the hand up by the forearm. “Yours again?”

I shook my head no.

“Is it Irish?”

I looked closer and didn't recognize anything from my heritage or culture about it. “Not that I can see. But it's so raw, it's hard to tell.”

“Damn,” he said, dropping her hand to the table.

“Vlasik isn't an Irish name—why would Celtic runes be surrounding her body?” Adrienne asked while tucking an errant hair away from her face. Her eyes turned down at the corners as she gently cradled the girl's face, her dark hair spilling over the end of the table. She was beautiful, twenty-nine, and had had a lifetime ahead of her. The tragedy of it caught in my throat and I had to look away.

“If we found her car in the impound lot, could you talk to it?” I asked Damien.

“It's always worth a try.”

The room turned suddenly cold and I shivered while rubbing the gooseflesh that rose on my arms. When I looked up, the Banshee stood directly behind Damien and Adrienne. She opened her mouth, unhinged her jaw to let out the deafening scream I'd been coming to know so well.

“No!” I shouted, holding out a hand. The entire room jumped, all faces turned to me. Even the Banshee's, and she cocked her head slowly in that same curious way.

“Monica,” Damien said. “What the fuck?”

I didn't bother looking at him, but kept my eyes fastened onto the Banshee's. “Shut up, D,” I said, quieter. He darted a look over his shoulder to where the Banshee floated, but his eyes registered nothing. “No more deaths.” I shook my head hoping to whatever God would have me that she could understand me. “I know. I know it's your job, but just let us figure this out first.” As I closed my eyes, my breath was short and my lungs constricted with a tightness that I wished would go the fuck away. When I opened my eyes again, she was in front of me—so close to my face that I could smell the stink of death on her breath.

“Monica.” George's gentle voice was behind me and I felt a hand on the small of my back.

“Give me a minute, George.” I didn't dare break my eyes away from hers again.

Her head tilted to the other side and she looked from me to Damien, her head spinning slowly and evenly, then back at me. And as if seeing the body on the table for the first time, she froze.

“Monica—what's going on?” Damien's voice boomed through the cold room.

Holding up a hand, I shushed him with a look that I hoped showed that I meant business. “What magic is this?” I asked the Banshee and gestured to Lena. Murky tears fell down her cheeks once more and I was getting used to the gruesome visuals she provided.

Once more, she blew a breath from puckered lips and a black smog encased us. Her crazy eyes and porcelain skin were still crystal clear despite the fog. My friends' voices became distant murmurs and I was suddenly standing amidst a crowd in the center of town. Cops ushered people away and yellow tape sectioned the people away from what they were chattering about. To my right stood the Banshee, her feet never touching the ground—merely floating an inch or so above, her feet limp at the ankles. To my left stood Dejan. His face was stony and revealed no emotion whatsoever.

“Go on, go home. There's nothing more to see here,” one cop said as he walked along the line. Dejan pushed people aside with a massively large shoulder as he made his way to the front of the crowd. The Banshee and I followed.

“You, too, buddy. Go home.”

Dejan grabbed the cop by the shirt uniform and growled. “Show me the scene.” His voice was low and menacing. The same dangerous purr that I remembered from centuries before.

The cop's eyes became dilated, an inky black. “Please, sir, right this way.” The officer escorted Dejan to the bulletin board, which he looked over rapidly for clues. His head was a blur with the fast search. His gaze stopped suddenly. Just below a smear of blood was a newspaper clipping—more specifically, a personal ad. He snatched it in his rough, dirty hand, lip curling back as he read. I leaned over his shoulder to see for myself what had caught his attention.

The vampire growled and crumpled the paper into his balled fist before shoving it deep in the pocket of his duster. Could that have been for me? Some sort of clue about my connection to the victim?

Without moving my feet, I was being pulled back from the scene, the Banshee's hand on my shoulder. Faster and faster we moved until I was back in the coroner's room, lying flat on my back on cool linoleum flooring.

A gasp caught in my throat and I looked up into three sets of very concerned eyes.

Damien was the first to exhale, hand to his chest. The sudden relief was soon replaced with an angry scowl. “Your penchant to black out on me during investigations is rather unsettling, succubus.”

George held my hand, pulling me to a sitting position. “You okay?”

“Oh, you know me. I'm just an attention whore,” I said, swiping a hand over my face.

“You got the whore part right,” he said, pinching my cheeks playfully.

“What happened, Monica?” Adrienne's melodic voice sang through the room. She looked genuinely concerned.

“The Banshee. Again. She was here and she showed me—well, it's kind of hard to explain.”

“Try us,” Damien grumbled and Adrienne put a calming hand on his arm. He shrugged away her touch. “Stop that! Maybe I don't want to calm down. Ever think of that?”

Adrienne's face twisted and her eyes pinched. She quickly blinked, looking away, and I couldn't help but feel bad for her. In an effort to change the subject and perhaps take the heat off the angel, I went into the story. The personal ad. Dejan in the picture. The Banshee bringing me to the past.

When I finished, Damien looked just as angry as he had before, if not maybe more so. He stalked to his file fax and pulled out Moe's file, flipping through it until he pulled out a close-up image of the bulletin board. Then, pulling the magnifying glass that hovered over Lena's body, he looked closely at all items on the board. “Well, I'll be damned,” he whispered before looking back up at me. “Do you think this is meant for you?”

I felt my shoulders touch my ears in an involuntary shrug. “It's too much of a coincidence along with my family crest carved into Moe's wrist, don't you think?”

Damien's phone rang just as the Banshee's shrill scream reverberated in my head.

Everyone gave me another strange look as Damien answered. After hanging up, he looked around at all of us. “We've got another murder. Let's go.”

W
e said good-bye to Jed and he gave us a sad wave, as though his life were so void of the living he could hardly bear to see us leave. He stared particularly hard at Adrienne as she sent him a flirty wave over her shoulder.

Damien filled us in on the little he knew as we drove to the crime scene. “The recent victim was found by some hikers in a section of a trail called Gobbler's Knob.” He slid a glance at me in the rearview mirror, and with a slight tilt to his head, his lips curved into a smile. “Yes, that's the real name. And it just might be my new nickname for you, succubus.”

A guttural sound rolled in the back of Adrienne's throat. “You're disgusting sometimes,” she huffed.

“I'm not the one who pretended to be a prostitute for months, hun.”

She rolled her eyes and punched him lightly on the shoulder. The sight of those two together, acting so familial, twisted my stomach. She had her little meat hooks in every man I liked. Granted, Damien and Adrienne were more like siblings than anything romantic, but still. It was unsettling. I wasn't used to having to compete for anyone's attention. And I didn't much care for it.

Grasping George's sleeve, I pulled him close to me. “You cannot become friends with her. Ever. Got it?”

“Damn.” He brushed my fingers off his lapel with mocked annoyance. “Calm down, girlfriend. You're the only blonde I've got eyes for.” After holding my smile for a moment, his gaze quickly shifted out the window. “Except for that blond hottie. Hel-
lo
!” I followed his eyes to a well-built blond man standing in the parking lot of the park. “Please tell me this is the trail we need to take!”

Damien pulled into a spot and read an old, rickety sign. “Alexander Basin,” he said aloud. “Yep, this is it.”

George was out of the car before any of us had even unbuckled.

“So how do we get to this place?” I asked. “Do they chopper us in or something?”

Damien shook his head, face twisting in amusement. Honestly, you'd think I'd just asked if the police chief would give us his Swiss bank account number or something. “We hike it,” he said. From his tone, I imagined him throwing a
duh
after it.

I quirked an eyebrow and crossed my arms under my breasts. “You're kidding, right?”

Damien looked down at my heels and another haughty smile splayed on those delicious lips of his. “Don't you worry, succubus. I can piggyback you there if you want.”

I considered this for a moment. My body pressed against his back, legs wrapped around his body. On an exhale I grabbed the hiking map from his hands and examined it closely. “Gobbler's Knob, you said?” Adrienne looked over my shoulder, and as if both scheming at the same time, we caught each other's eyes.

“We'll see you there in”—I looked back down at the map—“about two and a half miles.” Tossing the map at his chest, Adrienne followed me as I stepped over a few logs and twigs to a secluded area just inside the woods.

“Aw, c'mon, you guys!” Damien called after us. “You're really just gonna leave me here?”

With a
crack,
we did just that.

 

We both shifted to invisible, just in case we appeared in front of a ton of uniformed officers. Luckily, we were just far enough outside of the action that we could go back to being visible and walk the quarter mile to where yellow tape blocked off a large section of the beautiful trail. White screens were up around what I assumed was the body.

Adrienne walked toward the officers with a determination I'd never seen in her before. Then again, I'd never seen her on the job. She held up her badge as we ducked under the yellow tape. “Who can fill me in here?”

I followed at her heels, feeling completely out of place. A nervousness settled in my stomach and as we walked closer to the body, a stench of charred flesh and innards flooded my nose. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to keep my coffee down.

A younger officer came rushing over to Adrienne's side, his eyes sliding to her badge. Or maybe her rack. I couldn't quite tell. “Are you Detective Kane?”

“I'm Detective Lauriette. Kane is my partner.” She glanced back at me and hitched a thumb in my direction. “This is Monica Lamb. She's a special consultant we've hired to assist.”

The officer gave me a strange look, eyes settled on my belt. When I looked down, the fuzzy, pink handcuffs dangled there. “Oh, shit,” I mumbled, unclipping them and shoving them in my bag.

“Really, Monica?” Adrienne's face was a hardened scowl.

“Blame your partner,” I said through gritted teeth.

Thank Hell the officer interrupted us, giving Adrienne something else to focus in on. “Is Kane on his way?”

“He should be here within an hour. I can fill him in when he arrives.”

“The victim, Sonja Thomsen. Age twenty. A student at BYU. Family lives in Tennessee. She left to go on a hike yesterday morning, early around six a.m. according to her roommates. Was found this morning around eight a.m. by the Morgansons over there, who were taking their dog off the trail. Her lower body is charred, yet the face and sternum are very well intact. Damned strangest thing I've ever seen.”

Around our feet were the ashes of crispy, fallen leaves. “Forest fire?” I asked, clearly new at these questions based on the dumb looks I received from both Adrienne and the officer.

“No way,” he said. “There's no way a forest fire would be so contained. It's as though someone lit her on fire and only burned her bottom half until she died.”

“What was the time of death?” Adrienne asked, sending me daggers from her eyes. Clearly she wanted to do the questioning. I bet if Damien were here,
he'd
let me ask some questions.

“We won't know for sure until the medical examiner is finished, but we think somewhere around five this morning.”

“So someone kidnapped her for twenty-four hours? That seems weird, doesn't it?”

“Monica!” Adrienne snapped. “I will ask the questions.” After a pause, Adrienne cleared her throat. “Do we have any leads yet?”

“There's a boyfriend she hasn't been getting along with lately. And her mother's ex-husband who was apparently always a little too affectionate with her. A restraining order was involved. But, again, he's from Tennessee.” The officer shook his head. “We think this is definitely the work of the Crest Killer. Another symbol is on the body.”

I cringed.
Please don't be my family crest....

“And there's no connection yet between the victims?” Adrienne swiped her finger along the iPad.

“None that we've found.”

She nodded. “Thanks. I think we got it from here.”

He scurried away from the area as quickly as he could. Clearly he'd seen enough of the victim for one day.

At the edge of the second string of yellow tape was a box of gloves. Adrienne tossed me a couple, which I snapped on along with her. “You ready for this?”

I nodded yes, but my head screamed no.

With narrowed eyes, she scrutinized me from head to toe. “This will be gruesome. I can already tell. You can wait over there if you want.”

I should have said yes. I should have kissed her on the lips for giving me an out. But instead, I clenched my jaw and shook my head. “Nope. I'm here to help.” After another deep breath, I opened my eyes to find Adrienne's were still glued to my face. “Let's go.”

We slipped under the tape and around the white screens. And thank Hell for those. This sight was not one for random passers-by. I thought of the poor, unsuspecting couple who had found this girl. She was tied to a tree limb by bound wrists, a dangling torso. A pile of leaves and ashes lay at where her feet should be, a few embers still orange and glowing. Her body was burned to nothing from her rib cage down, leaving a dripping carcass from head to breasts. Someone had washed the dirt and ash from her face and neck prior to leaving her hanging there. Her head lay limply, chin to chest, cheeks slackened, eyes wide and horrified. She had beautiful blond hair that was styled in a clean ponytail and crystal blue eyes. A pinched nose that lots of women pay good money to a plastic surgeon to achieve—in short, she was a stunning, young woman.

The smell of crispy flesh flooded my nose and a wave of nausea climbed my throat. I clamped my eyes shut, pushing away the horrifying image and breathing deep through my mouth so not to focus on the putrid scent. After spending a moment composing myself, I opened my eyes again to the horrific sight.

Sure enough, another family crest was on the body. This one wasn't nearly as crude as the other two. It was branded onto her skin in angry blisters just between her breasts.

Adrienne knelt and pinched the ash between two fingers, bringing it to her nose and inhaling deeply. “No kerosene. No lighter fluid. I can't even trace the scent of a matchbook,” she whispered.

I could see tendrils of dark magic twisting around her body and up from the ash like thorny vines surrounding her. From a distance, we heard a faint
crack
and I assumed it was George. A light brush on my arm startled me, making me jump nearly out of my skin.

“It's me,” said a voice so quiet, only immortal ears could hear it.

“Julian?” I whispered back.

“Hey, Jules,” Adrienne said, and judging by her wide eyes, she was as surprised as me to see him here. “What are you doing?”

“Just having a look,” he answered, cryptic as ever.

Adrienne took a few pictures on her phone, made some notes, and bagged a few of her own samples. “Let's go talk to the couple who found her.”

We exited the area and Adrienne held up the yellow tape just a touch longer to allow Julian time to exit.

“What are you doing here?” I muttered through the corner of my mouth.

“Later,” he whispered back.

A listless breeze coiled through the trees, rustling leaves and bringing a deep, savory scent of ash and pine. A couple sat on a fallen tree, the female holding a large yellow lab in her arms. His snout was covered with soot and dirt caked all the way up its legs almost to the belly. She nuzzled her face in his neck, not caring at all about the dirt, dried tears staining her cheeks. Her husband sat beside her, hands wringing around each other and staring vacantly at the ground.

“Mr. and Mrs. Morganson?” Adrienne stalked toward the couple.

The man cleared his throat and stood. “Yes. That's us.”

“I understand you two found the body this morning?”

Mrs. Morganson nodded and scratched the dog's ear while standing as well. “That's right,” she said. “We had Baxter off leash and he headed off the trail.”

“Which isn't all that unusual,” her husband interjected. “We go off the trail all the time around here.”

She nodded with him. “We followed Baxter and found him with the girl.”

“Then what did you do?” Adrienne asked, her eyes trailing down their ash-covered clothing.

“I-I tried to grab her so that if she was still alive, she wasn't hanging by her arms. But—” Mr. Morganson's voice cracked and his wife ran her hand in small circles over his back. After a moment, he composed himself. “But as soon as I touched her, it was clear she was already dead.”

“It wasn't already clear considering she only had half a body?” Adrienne raised an eyebrow. I nearly gasped as I shot a look in her direction. Her biting sarcasm was cruel and unnecessary to these poor people.

Mr. Morganson shook his head. “I . . . well, no. I-I mean, I guess it should have been obvious, but I j-just wasn't thinking.”

Adrienne made a note. “There was no fire blazing under her?”

Mrs. Morganson answered this time. “No, it was mostly out when we arrived. Not much smoke either. I called for 911 as Rick ran to her.”

“You didn't notice anyone around? No one on the trail that stood out to you?” Adrienne's voice was stern. I was amazed to see her lack of empathy with the people who had discovered the victim.

Both shook their heads no. “We only passed one other person. We've seen him on this trail a couple of times over the past month. He didn't look suspicious or anything if that's what you're asking,” Mrs. Morganson answered. Adrienne's gaze narrowed. “But . . . but the trails aren't very busy this early,” Mrs. Morganson added, eyes cast at Adrienne's iPad.

“And what did he look like? This other person on the trail?”

“White male, taller than me by maybe an inch or so,” Mr. Morganson answered. “Dark hair . . .”

“Well, that describes just about forty percent of the population,” I muttered.

“He was a large guy . . . easily had an extra sixty pounds on me. Muscle.”

Adrienne slid a look to me, lips pressed into a small line. “Any distinguishing marks? Scars? Birthmarks?”

Both shook their heads. “He had eyes so dark they almost looked black,” Mrs. Morganson offered. “And he was pale. Like, really, really pale.” I slid a look to Adrienne. Dejan. It had to have been Dejan.

“Okay.” Adrienne snapped her iPad case closed. “Thank you very much. The police should have your information and if we need anything further, we'll be in touch.”

Adrienne turned away and then quickly spun back to the couple. “Oh, just one more thing. Where were you yesterday morning? Around six a.m.?”

All jaws dropped—including mine and I swear I heard Julian's, too.

“Adrienne,” I whispered.

The look she sent me was frigid. A cold, hardened stare that was enough to shut me up instantly. Fair enough—she was more of a veteran at this than me for sure. It just seemed so . . . accusatory. Not just the question, but
how
she asked it.